Quake shakes East Coast but does little damage

Tuesday

Aug 23, 2011 at 12:01 AMAug 23, 2011 at 10:19 PM

A 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit the East Coast about 1:55 p.m. EDT Tuesday. The quake was centered in Mineral, Va., and was felt up and down the coast and as far away as the Midwest. Here are state-by-state reports from GateHouse Media newspapers.

A 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit the East Coast about 1:55 p.m. EDT Tuesday. The quake was centered in Mineral, Va., and was felt up and down the coast and as far away as the Midwest. Here are state-by-state reports from GateHouse Media newspapers.

MASSACHUSETTS

Mary Lou Joyce of North Weymouth was among those who felt the quake.

"The whole house was shaking, so I ran outside the house to see what was happening," she said.
Her daughter Kristin Joyce, who works in Washington, D.C., for the Department of Health and Human Services, said buildings were being evacuated in the capital.

The office of the Marshfield Mariner, headquarters for GateHouse New England's south unit and Wicked Local sites, was evacuated after the building on Enterprise Drive began shaking. The staff was allowed back in after five minutes.

"Most employees thought they were having a dizzy spell similar to when you get off a carnival ride," said publisher Mark Olivieri.
"I was on the phone and quickly realized but the building was swaying form side to side. It lasted about 15 seconds.
"We cleared the office quickly, some employees knew exactly why while others had no idea what was going on."
Police in Quincy, Hanover, Stoughton, Duxbury, Hingham, Carver and Braintree reported a number of calls. Ceiling lights swayed noticeably in The Patriot Ledger newsroom. The quake was also felt in Cambridge.

Telephone lines in Massachusetts were jammed within minutes of the quake.

Boston College's Weston Observatory has been receiving numerous calls from people in and around Boston who have felt the earthquake, said Josh Sovie, a graduate student at the college.

"We have had calls from all over the area from people who have felt it," Sovie said.

Sovie said the Observatory recorded the earthquake at 5.9 on the Richter scale.

- GateHouse New England

CONNECTICUT

Laura Giannelli, marketing director at the United Way of Southeastern Connecticut, was sitting at her second-floor desk in Gales Ferry when things started moving Tuesday afternoon.

“My desk was trembling and my plant stand was swaying,” she said. “It lasted about a minute.”

The effects of a 5.9-magnitude earthquake, the brunt of which shook Virginia, were felt throughout Connecticut on Tuesday.

Aaron Browne was standing outside of his car in New London, searching his pockets for his car keys when he noticed the coffee he had placed on his car roof was shaking. He said he looked up to see if there was a train coming on some nearby tracks. There wasn’t.

“Then my co-worker in New Haven texted me that her office had been evacuated because of the earthquake,” said Browne.

State police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance said some buildings in New Haven, and in other areas of the state, were evacuated out of precaution.

“There were numerous reports of tremors in Connecticut,” Vance said. “But we have no reports of any injuries or damage.”

Vance said he wasn’t aware of any evacuations in the Norwich area. He said the state police were following emergency management protocol and monitoring the situation.

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy on Tuesday afternoon said the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection was at the Emergency Operations Center as a precaution, though there were no reports of injuries.

- Norwich Bulletin

OHIO

The earthquake that rattled the East Coast was felt in Columbus, Ohio, around 1:55 p.m. Tuesday, said Tim Leftwich, geologist with the Ohio Geological Survey.

“It looks like it’s been centered around Washington, D.C., and Virginia,” he said.

While Stark County Emergency Management Agency Director Tim Warstler said no damage was reported in the area, the quake measured 4.8 in Stark County, he was told by the Ohio Emergency Management Agency. Leftwich said a 5.9 quake would result in damage.

“We could expect pictures to be shaken off the walls, windows to be broken, perhaps some chimneys coming down, maybe some facade damage,” Leftwich said. “Having felt it here in Ohio, one can imagine there will be some damage in Virginia and the Washington, D.C., area.”

In Ohio, structural damage wouldn’t be expected “unless a building is not that well-constructed (and) very close to the epicenter,” he said.

Leftwich was on the second floor of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Geological Survey when the quake hit.

“It’s a very prominent event. It’s traveling at the speed of sound through rock, which is about 6 kilometers a second, so it probably got here a couple minutes after it actually happened there.”

“These earthquakes that we have mid-continent and along the East Coast are a little different (than those on the West Coast),” Leftwich said. “We’re not along a plate boundary where tectonic plates are sliding and slipping past each other.”

- Canton Repository

DELAWARE

"All counties and the city of Wilmington have been canvassed and are reporting no damages," said Roseanne Pack, a spokeswoman for the Delaware Emergency Management Agency.

Police in Smyrna and Clayton also had no reports of injury or damage.

But even if the physical damage was minimal, the experience was very significant.

“When things started to move I thought I was going to have to check into Kent General because I was out of my mind," said Alfonzo Ricketts, of Dover.

Cyndie Moody, manager of Nature's Way in Smyrna, said some of her merchandise fell.

"I thought the people next door (at a salon) mixed some chemicals they shouldn't have," she said. "The I checked the roof — silly me. But we've had people up there before that I had to report."

Other employees at businesses in the Smyrna Mart plaza rushed out their doors as the quake shook.

Nicole Kibler, co-owner of Hot Lock Salon and Spa, said at first she thought it might have been an explosion.

(An earthquake) is the last thing I thought it would be," she said.

No merchandise was ruined at her salon.

“I felt like I was tripping, or in another state like California," said Rob Denero, of Wilmington, who was in Dover for the quake. "It’s scary. It makes you want to live every day like it’s your last.”

Hunter Lord, 12, of Dover, was in a beauty shop with her mother and tried to clean up.

“My mom was telling me to move, but I didn’t understand why," she said. "A bottle fell, and I was going over to pick it up.”

She added that she wouldn't mind living through another one. “It was pretty cool.”

Frank Fantini, a Dover businessman, was in his office when the shaking started.

“All of a sudden things started shaking," he said. "We have a girl who works with us who’s from California, and she pretty much acted the same way we did — she was pretty surprised. I’ve lived in Delaware for a long time and I’ve never experienced anything like this before. It wasn’t all that bad; sounds like nobody got hurt.”

City Editor Jesse Chadderdon was at lunch at the Bay Road Buffalo Wild Wings when he said cocktail glasses hanging from a rack began the bar began shaking and clinking together. Patrons began asking one another whether they felt the rumbling, moments before a cable news network reported the earthquake on one of the restaurant's televisions.

Pack said the effects of the quake include "minimal" power outages and a single gas-line rupture. Cell phone service outages have also been reported.

Representatives from the Delaware Geological Survey said they are currently collecting information on the quake and will provide updates by the end of the day.

Dover Police Dept. Captain Tim Stump reported no damage in Dover.

"We've been inundated with calls but they're mainly people calling for confirmation (of the earthquake) so we were fortunate," Stump said.

- Dover Post

NEW YORK

Many in Ontario County say they felt the quake earlier today.

Greg Morey, a surveillance officer at the Finger Lakes Race Track, said he and others felt the quake at about 2 p.m.

"We were just sitting there and it just felt like the chairs were wobbling a bit, and we looked up at the monitors on the wall and could see them shaking," said Morey. "We had a gathering here of people coming in the hallway saying, 'did anyone else feel that'?"

A few locals also responded on Messenger Post's Facebook page, saying they felt the tremor in Honeoye, Palmyra, West Bloomfield, and Phelps.

Tuesday’s temblor marks the second straight year seismic activity has been felt locally.

A 5.- magnitude earthquake centered 40 miles north of Ottawa was felt from Buffalo to Albany and into Vermont on June 23, 2010.

“People started popping up from their cubicles like gophers,” said Farmington resident Randy Compton from his workplace at the 30-story Xerox tower in downtown Rochester following the 2010 quake.

Retired Newark science teacher Brad Timerson at the time that said the reason people feel various levels of movement from a quake when they are far from the epicenter is because areas near or on bedrock tend to conduct the energy from the quake, making the movement more noticeable. Where the soil is more sandy, people tend not to feel it, as the sand soaks up the energy.

As with yesterday’s tremors, no injuries or damage were reported locally.

- Messenger Post

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